Businesses You Might Start as a Stay-at-Home Parent

Staying home to take care of your children offers a number of benefits to their overall development. It also often means taking a hit to your income. Many couples who decide to have one parent stay at home have to live off one income. They end up cutting way back on their expenses and making many sacrifices.

Parents who stay home don’t have to live on pennies. They can generate some income from home by starting a small business or pursuing other lucrative ventures. All they require is a small business loan and a few other basics. Here are a few ideas for business and money-making opportunities you can pursue as a stay-at-home parent:

Writing

There are millions of websites representing small businesses or entrepreneurs who need all the help they can to get the word out about what they are doing. That means they need copywriting services to improve their website visibility and to attract more customers (or readers). You can make money by writing articles, blog posts, and web pages for them.

You don’t have to be a writer by trade to make a living writing from home. For example, if you worked as a researcher before you stayed home with the kids, you can find jobs writing for science websites or for magazines related to the field in which you worked. Even if you have no experience, you can find jobs writing about parenting, which you should know well by now. All you need is to know how to research and write well. You’ll have to build up some good samples before you can land high-paying jobs, but with consistency and hard work, you can make a good living as a freelance writer.

Online Store

You don’t have to buy and store products to run your own online shop, nor do you need to make the products yourself. Through drop shipping, you can sell just about anything you like without having to buy the products first. All you do is sell the products through your website. When someone makes a sale, you send the money to the supplier, which then ships the product directly to the customer. You pocket the difference.

All you have to do to have an online store with drop shipping is to start and maintain a website. The better you promote the site, the more customers you are likely to get and the more money you are likely to make.

Investing

Anyone can trade on the stock market without the help of a broker thanks to the Internet. And if you’ve completed your research and are a bit lucky, you can make a lot of money through online trades. You can invest in stocks, mutual funds, foreign currencies, and commodities. You can start small and then re-invest any money you make, growing your fortune over time.

You’ll need to commit to doing systematic research on both the markets and the companies in which you choose to invest. You can do this at any time during your day by watching the news, reading the paper, and browsing websites.

What You’ll Need

In addition to potentially requiring a small business loan, there are a few other things you might need to start working from home, depending on what kind of venture you are pursuing. At a minimum, you’ll need a laptop and a good Internet connection. Make sure you choose a plan that has the speeds you need from a provider that is known for consistent service. You don’t want to deal with frequent outages.

You may also need a home office. You can set this up in a spare bedroom, a formal dining room, an extra family room, a den, or even a sunroom. Get a comfortable chair, a nice working surface, and a cabinet in which you can store your paperwork. Anything else you need will depend on what you do, such as supplies for selling your creations, an area to greet clients if you are consulting, or special software to conduct your business.

You don’t have to live on pennies as a stay-at-home parent. You can make the time to run a business from home while also caring for your children and having the flexibility to take them where they need to go. Consider one of these work-from-home ventures or explore other opportunities.

About Us

Welcome to ABC at Home! The woman/parenting/homeschooling/entrepreneur resource brought to you by a busy, but efficient mother! I write articles about travel, business, finance and many more subjects for stay-at-home parents (yes, that includes men too) so that our kids can thrive as much as we do.